What can rats climb?

If you have a garden or other area where you are trying to keep rats out of, then you have probably put up some kind of small fence to ensure that they cannot get in and eat your fruits or vegetables or get into your garbage cans or other area. Somewhere along the way someone probably said to you that a fence may not be enough to keep the rats out because they can climb the fence. That made you wonder – what can rats climb?



The truth of the matter is that they can’t climb anything. They are not like squirrels that you see climb trees. They do not have additional toes or special grip pads that allow them to climb up the fence or other kind of wall, so a fence is the ideal way to keep a rat out.

What you need to realize is that rat can only get into something where there are avenues that allow it to move up a ramp or to move from one small level to the next. For example, if there is a board or a piece of pipe available for the rat to use as a sort of ramp then it will use it to move from one level to the next. Frequently rats will use the pipes that are found in homes or along gutters to get from one location to the next. They are very good at maintaining balance so there is very little chance of them falling off.

Another way that they can “climb” is if a person has a brick wall where the brinks indent slightly as you much up the wall. This gives the rats the ability to climb from brick up to the next where there is a small ledge that it can climb onto. That allows it to stand on that brick and use it to reach the next level. This because a type of step system, but is not true climbing.

All this is designed to teach you that a properly built fence can keep a rat out of virtually any location you want to exempt it from. This also means if you dig a good trench around a garden or other area you can also successfully keep the rat or rats away from where you want. It doesn’t take a huge amount to keep them out. They have limited abilities so you just have to limit them even more by being smart about the structures that you build.

Go back to the How to get rid of rats home page or email me for more information about What can rats climb?

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